We began a new unit today in which we’ll be studying poetry, working specifically to develop skills necessary to parse and to understand a poem.

We went over the first of several steps on how to understand (a poem). (The “a poem” parenthetical suggests that these are steps for understanding any challenging texts, not just poems.) The steps so far:

1. Read the poem (including the title)
2. Make sure you understand all the words (no guessing/inferring).
3. Read the poem again (including the title)
4. Mark 2-3 words per line that you think are the most significant; read the poem by only reading those words
5. Read the poem again (including the title)
6. Clear up ambiguity:
   1. Pronoun/antecedent ambiguity
   2. Ambiguity arising from words with multiple meanings

We will pick up here tomorrow. The kids who were at home will be in class to finish up the steps; the kids who were in class today will follow along with the online streamed class.

That’s right — did I mention it? We streamed the classes today for the first time! So everyone did the same thing! The recording of one stream is on Google Classroom for anyone who missed out.